Kilby Allen
A Stockroom Exegesis of Psalm Fifty-One

Kilby Allen - A Stockroom Exegesis of Psalm Fifty-One

Fiction
Kilby Allen is a native of the Mississippi Delta, and received her MFA from Brooklyn College, where she was awarded both the Himan Brown Award and the Lainoff Prize in 2010. While living in New York,… Read more »
Clay Matthews
An Angel Gets Her Wings

Clay Matthews - An Angel Gets Her Wings

Contest - 2nd Place
Clay Matthews has published poetry in journals such as The American Poetry Review, Black Warrior Review, Kenyon Review, Gulf Coast, and elsewhere. His most recent book, Pretty, Rooster (Cooper… Read more »
Peter Gordon
Braniff

Peter Gordon - Braniff

Fiction
Peter Gordon’s short stories have appeared in a wide range of publications including The New Yorker, Ploughshares, The Yale Review, The Southern Review, The Antioch Review, Glimmer Train, Virginia… Read more »
Meg Stout
Grasp

Meg Stout - Grasp

Creative Nonfiction
Meg Stout lives in Burlington, Vermont, where she likes her winters cold, her summers humid, and her arts community eccentric. She earned a BFA in creative writing from the University of Maine at… Read more »
Anne Goodwin
Habeas Corpus

Anne Goodwin - Habeas Corpus

Fiction
Anne Goodwin writes fiction for the freedom to contradict and continually reinvent herself. She has published 50 short stories online and in print. A recent—and somewhat evangelical—convert to… Read more »
Gaylord Brewer
More Honored in the Breach:
Fava Bean

Gaylord Brewer - More Honored in the Breach:
Fava Bean

Poetry
Gaylord Brewer is a professor at Middle Tennessee State University, where he founded and for 20+ years has edited the journal Poems & Plays. His forthcoming books are a cookbook/memoir, The… Read more »
Roy Bentley
O, Kindergarten

Roy Bentley - O, Kindergarten

Contest - 3rd Place
Roy Bentley has received fellowships from the NEA, the Florida Division of Cultural Affairs, and the Ohio Arts Council. Poems have appeared in The Southern Review, Shenandoah, Pleiades, Blackbird,… Read more »
Janette Ayachi
On Meeting a Fox

Janette Ayachi - On Meeting a Fox

Janette Ayachi is an Edinburgh-based poet who graduated from Stirling University with a combined BA Honours in English Literature and Film Studies. She then went on to study a Masters in Creative… Read more »
Brett Foster
On the Numbness That Will Be Our Future

Brett Foster - On the Numbness That Will Be Our Future

Contest - 1st Place
Brett Foster is the author of two poetry collections, The Garbage Eater (Triquarterly Books/Northwestern University Press, 2011), and Fall Run Road, which was awarded Finishing Line Press's Open… Read more »
Brian Maxwell
Pensacola

Brian Maxwell - Pensacola

Fiction
Brian Maxwell is a Florida-based writer, particularly interested in the short story form. His fiction has appeared in Fugue, Evansville Review, Louisville Review, The Beloit Fiction Journal, Rio… Read more »
Michael Derrick Hudson
Scale Model of a World War II Airplane

Michael Derrick Hudson - Scale Model of a World War II Airplane

Poetry
Michael Derrick Hudson lives in Fort Wayne, Indiana. His poems have appeared in Columbia, Georgia Review, Gulf Coast, Iowa Review, North American Review, New Letters, Washington Square, and other… Read more »
Amorak Huey
Scientists Say One Language Disappears Every 14 Days

Amorak Huey - Scientists Say One Language Disappears Every 14 Days

Poetry
Amorak Huey, a former newspaper editor and reporter, teaches writing at Grand Valley State University in Michigan. His chapbook The Insomniac Circus is forthcoming from Hyacinth Girl Press. His poems… Read more »
Valerie Cumming
Secret Recipe

Valerie Cumming - Secret Recipe

Fiction
Valerie Cumming received her MFA in fiction writing from the University of Michigan, and her stories have appeared or are forthcoming in more than twenty publications. Currently, she works as a… Read more »
Matthew Hobson
The Audubon Guide to North American Suicides

Matthew Hobson - The Audubon Guide to North American Suicides

Creative Nonfiction
Matthew Hobson's work has appeared in literary journals including Hayden's Ferry Review, The Chattahoochee Review, River City, South Dakota Review, and Gulf Stream Literary Magazine. He is a man of a… Read more »
Rebecca Orchard
The Farm Before the Hills

Rebecca Orchard - The Farm Before the Hills

Fiction
Rebecca Orchard is a writer and classical musician who majored in French horn at the Peabody Institute of the Johns Hopkins University. Her studies have taken her to Vienna and throughout the US,… Read more »
John Goulet
The Hyena Man

John Goulet - The Hyena Man

Fiction
John Goulet grew up in Boston, Colorado and Iowa. He attended St. John’s University, San Francisco State, and the University of Iowa Writers’ Workshop. After serving in the Peace Corps in… Read more »
Piotr Gwiazda
The Propertyless

Piotr Gwiazda - The Propertyless

Poetry
Born and raised in Poland, Piotr Gwiazda is a poet, critic, and translator. He has published two books of poems, Gagarin Street (2005) and Messages (2012), a critical study James Merrill and W.H.… Read more »
Daniel Butterworth
Toward Death

Daniel Butterworth - Toward Death

Poetry
D. S. Butterworth teaches literature and creative writing at Gonzaga University. He has a creative non-fiction book from Algonquin, Waiting for Rain: A Farmer’s Story, and a book of poems, The… Read more »
Michael Capel
Walk

Michael Capel - Walk

Fiction
Michael Capel received an MFA in fiction writing from Boise State University. His short stories have appeared in Sou’wester, South Dakota Review, Barnstorm and Existere. Born in upstate New York, he… Read more »
Sheila O’Connor
Winter Boys

Sheila O’Connor - Winter Boys

Creative Nonfiction
Sheila O’Connor is the award-winning author of four novels: Keeping Safe the Stars, Sparrow Road, Where No Gods Came and Tokens of Grace. Her poetry and fiction have been recognized with fellowships… Read more »

Grasp

Meg Stout

1.
I have my mother’s hands: heavily lined, in proportion to my six-foot body, large enough to cup a basketball. The middle fingers angle out with a sharp bump, point away from my center. The palms are fleshy, pads of the thumbs like teardrops.

2.
At the surgeon's office, my arms look sleek beneath the white lights. He asks if he can touch me, rests his thumb against my inner wrist. Inside: a peanut, a tiny cyst.

3.
I am young. I put my hands through countless stressors: glass doorknobs, narrow cups of tea, the wire end of a slippery earring. Yards of merino wool, alpaca, cotton slub, synthetic yarn. Steering wheels. Handlebars. Bread dough on the second rise. With one hand, I punch it down and knead.

4.
The doctor finds hardness all over my upper body: thick trigger points along my shoulders, curled ropes in my neck. Have you been stressed? He asks.

5.
In the garden, my hands hover like honeybees. Clothed in rubbery fabric, they fly among the soil and greenery as I touch peppers, tomatoes, chamomile. Crabgrass is removed with a twist of the arm; tiny maples pulled by the stem. I finger a nubby lemon just ripening.

6.
The aches begin deep in the arm, beneath the tissue. In the night, I wake with limbs still asleep—dreaming of pins and needles. The doctors don’t think I will lose my hands.

7.
When considering loss, remember what has been touched: the hot yellow of a rubber duck melting on the stove. The fur of a writhing dog. Empty bottles at someone’s father’s funeral. Don’t consider the hands themselves, those unfortunate conductors.

8.
I have not been stressed. I have been happy—happier, at least, than before.

9.
The pain shifts like electricity: dances along a tendon, flips against a bone. From the outside, my wrists look the same as always, greenish veins mapped like roads, skin imprinted with texture.

10.
Each night, I sheath my arms in synthetic black fabric, tilted metal, anoint them with oil and seal with Velcro.

11.
To stretch the tendons, reach hands in front, then lift. Curl them into balls. Repeat. Bring them together against the chest, like a prayer.

12.
Of course these hands are money. Of course they float each day across a keyboard, steer a mouse. Sign checks. Cook meals. Open doors. Crack windows. Shift into second gear. Comfort him.

13.
Naked on the table, I ask the masseuse if she can feel it. Imagine clay, she says, then imagine stone.

Read more »